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The Year In Tech Law
Selanit writes "CNet has an article rounding up the year in IP law. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this article is that the SCO case gets only one paragraph out of a fairly lengthy article. It's good to get a reminder that there are other issues out there, including content filtering in libraries, the potential for a tax on Internet access, pop-up ads, domain name legislation, and of course file-sharing."
Why wasn't the Supreme Court's upholding of serial copyright term extension (Eldred v. Ashcroft) mentioned?
There was another explanation, something that some people believed in.
The idea was that the net worked because of shared protocols. You didn't have a cop enforcing thing in the center -- people followed the protocols because it was in their own interests to do so. If you didn't follow the protocols, then you'd be unable to communicate.
Protocols that allowed people to cheat were bad protocols. I used to hang around on the cypherpunks list, and that's where I picked up this world view. But the idea is that a good protocol will prevent people from cheating, usually cryptographically.
The idea was that if you were a solid net citizen, and pushed for strong, well designed protocols, and if you were responsible (ie., you applied your patches), then you would be safe.
Cypherpunks had actually extended their experiences on the net to a form of libertarian politics. They thought that by applying these ideas, the state could -- would inevitably -- shrink, and that people would become less dependent on central authorities enforcing rules.
DoS attacks tend to argue against that point of view, I think, as does the power of inertia that old protocols like SMTP have.
But on the other hand, you have to admit that the net is remarkably usable, remarkably complicated, and remarkably free of central administration.
I would be pretty surprised if the powers that be didn't break it over the next decade or so.
And out of curiosity--there have been plenty of high-profile spammers interviewed in various publications; now that an anti-spam bill has been passed, are those folks all fair game for law enforcement?
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Who says I have to use "the" root DNS servers?
Who says I have to use "official" ICANN IP address allocations?
Am I committing a crime in the United States if I put up a private network running TCP/IP, put up some DNS servers that are authoritative for "CartoonNetwork.com" and put up some web servers to host pornography for that domain name? What about if I invite other people to participate in my private network? What about if I sell access to the public to my private network? What if I sell rights to corporations to join my private network? Where does the idiocy end?
Idiotic legislation to attempt to control the behaviour of the Internet is going to result in "multiple internets". We may well end up with the "United States internet" and the "rest of the world internet". Hell-- we practically have a "Chinese internet" and a "rest of the world internet" now.
Cooperation on the Internet works on the basis of social pressure, not on legislation. Legislation will only cause the Internet to fragment and "route around" the stupidity.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
Okay, so I don't have unending faith in CNet, but I'd at least expect some savviness to at least know about Linux (CNet does acknowledge the SCO case as "Perhaps the most far-reaching high-technology legal issue in 2003"), so they're not blind. The problem is that the public, the average Windows-Hotmail-IE-Kazaa computer user has no idea that the case is significant.
....
...) than to something at the core of the computer revolution (and hence at the basis of all these issues) as the open source case. CNet should be trying to educate users, not pandering to their sensibilities.
It's sad, because it certainly is significant to the ordinary computer user. What happens if open source is allowed to collapse like this (and it won't)? Well, much of the present software developed has been more than a little derived from open source or open research (IE derived from Mosaic or even modern UIs hijacked from Xerox research).
Sure, the ordinary user doesn't care about Linux for his or her own system, but what will happen to these users if open source folds?
All the servers and other systems that form the framework of the internet could become increasingly propietary by rogue distributors like SCO and make the Internet more costly to run/access, whatever. Researchers wouldn't be willing to develop formerly open source software because they'll simply be padding Darl's pockets for free, so there could be a sort of stagnation of new and creative ideas (users didn't think all the UI innovations were Microsoft's idea, did they?). Decreased (albeit somewhat slight) competition for Microsoft's monolithic OS. The list goes on
Basically, it's sad to see CNet (a technology portal) give more face time to an (avoidable and preventable -- with Mozilla or blockers) issue like Pop-Ups (and misleading domain names, etc
But I guess I know what Linux and SCO is and everything, so I have a different perspective.
And although outright pornography isn't found in libraries, some books are considered pornography to conservatives.
An erotic work will fall into one of two classes: "obscene" erotica without artistic or scientific value, and merely "indecent" erotica considered "harmful to minors" even though it may be art. The Supreme Court has long held that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not protect the right to disseminate "obscene" material. The COPPA/COPA/CIPA controversy mostly considers 1. preserving adults' access to legitimate "indecent" erotica, and 2. preserving access to non-erotica that censorware miscategorizes as erotica, such as breast cancer pages, Philip K. Dick pages, pages that promote adoption over abortion or vice versa, Matsushita's site, etc.